


Of Doctors and Doctors

by whopooh



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Nightcap, Norwegians - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 21:26:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7986820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whopooh/pseuds/whopooh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mac has exciting news and Phryne finds herself uncharacteristically doubtful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Doctors and Doctors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Whilenotwriting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whilenotwriting/gifts).



> Happy happy birthday, Whilenotwriting! I think you might notice that this story is very much for you!
> 
> And thank you as always for de-Scandying me, Fire_Sign!

”You do know it’s not easy, writing a doctoral thesis?” 

The small company of three went still, and the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher was apalled at the realisation that those censoring words had actually come from her own mouth. And directed at _Mac_ , of all people, who had shared her exciting news with Phryne and Jack after dinner as they were having a nightcap in Phryne’s parlour. 

How could she say such a thing to the most clever person she had ever known – the red haired woman with such a splendidly inquisitive mind, a mind that usually led her to join in when Phryne went after trouble? She felt like the words had come out of her mouth without passing through her brain.

It was not Mac who responded first. She was struck by the words, sitting in Phryne’s chair with a drink in hand and a slightly open mouth. It was Jack Robinson, standing at the mantelpiece, who answered:

”Nothing that matters is easy. If anyone, I thought you knew that.” He gave her a look pointed enough to prick her skin down to her bones.

”I know, I know,” Phryne said, blushing a little from being caught out as censoring and... somehow doubting her friend’s abilities. ”I am sorry Mac, I don’t know where that came from.” She smiled apologetically and offered her friend some more whisky as a peace offering.

She did know, though, very well where that had come from. She just didn’t want to admit it. Her rash, unthinking statement came from one of her old experiences in Europe after the war. In her equally luscious and unsettling stay in Paris, she had for a while known some representatives of the Scandinavian contingent living in the city. The Norwegians she had found especially fascinating, with their tall, hard, stringy bodies; their faces weather-beaten and smoothly innocent at the same time; and their constant craving to go to the countryside for long walks as soon as they had the chance. 

Phryne had struck up a relationship with the delicious prospective painter Haakon – who was perhaps more beautiful than talented, but on the other hand he was _very_ beautiful. He tended to lose himself in her eyes and even took her out into the mountains once, but he never summoned the courage to actually use Phryne as a model. 

She had also met Haakon’s friend Knud, a serious-minded man in his forties who appeared to be writing a dissertation on an extinct language for one of the professors at the University of Paris. He was the most resilient creature on earth – he never seemed to even touch another person as far as Phryne saw, and he didn’t respond to her flirtations at all. Jack Robinson really had nothing on him, Phryne decided with a smirk. She was told his dissertation was in the constant state of being almost done. She heard him proclaim it himself more than once, to the mirth of the company and earning him a helping of wine, but noone had ever seen a word he had written. How long he had actually been a student was a mystery that seemed to stretch back almost into the ancient history of his extinct language. 

Knud never spoke about his research and most of the time he was silent, only to suddenly start conversing about surprising topics like ponies or traditional knitting from his home region. Haakon told her that the scholar sometimes disappeared for months, noone knew where – buried in the library or visiting another continent, they couldn’t say. The last time Phryne ever saw him, before Haakon moved back home to Norway to not become a painter anymore, Knud had been a little too interested in the absinthe and had started hallucinating, frantically talking about his fear of ”the Great Dane” that he was certain was after him. 

Knud had convinced her you had to be slightly mad to even consider that.

Phryne turned to Mac and continued, in an attempt to soften her words. ”I don’t mean that you would have any difficulties to do it, of course. If anyone can, it’s you. It just seems that people who go in for the academic world kind of … lose themselves, into a world of books and machinations and of never finishing anything,” she said.

”I seem to be friends with the best detectives in Melbourne”, Mac said to the room in general. ”If ever I’m lost I’ll surely be found again quickly enough.”

”You won’t disappear?” Phryne said, looking sadder than seemed reasonable under the circumstances. ”You won’t bury yourself in books and forget how to have fun and only talk to people with titles?”

Mac’s and Jack’s combined snorts made her revisit her own words and retract: ”I meant other titles, academic titles, not people that are _titled_ , obviously.”

Mac rolled her eyes and arched her eyebrow at Jack.

”Look who’s talking. The woman who came back to the Antipodes after fifteen years, and then flew to Europe on a whim and almost didn’t come back from that.”

”I was always coming back, you knew that perfectly well,” Phryne retorted. 

The truth was that they hadn’t, and Mac had had more than one conversation with a strained Jack Robinson about what it would be like if Phryne Fisher never returned. Mac knew that Jack still didn’t quite believe she was here to stay, let alone to stay with him – or as close to staying with him as was possible to conjure up for a force of nature such as Phryne Fisher. But Phryne didn’t seem to think of herself in the same terms as she thought of the rest of the world, and the idea that Mac might somehow disappear into the country of the bookish and near-sighted seemed to truly unsettle her.

”You won’t disown me, or go to Rio, or become a hermit and not visit until the next decade?” she persisted.

Jack watched the two women with a slight smile and held his tongue, allowing the unexpected exchange to unfold without interruptions. Mac sighed in an exaggerated way to drive her point home, still incredulous but also a little heart-warmed by the turn of the conversation. 

”I... promise I’ll come for dinner every Sunday evening, at eight o’clock sharp, if that makes you feel better,” she said. ”If I can’t make it, I will always write you a note so you know, delivered via Mr Butler or in person. And I’m sure there will be mysteries at the university I will need you to come and help me with.” She paused and looked inquiringly at Phryne. ”Will that do?”

Phryne tilted her head and thought for a moment, and smiled at her friend. ”You know, Mac, that will do.”


End file.
